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Pastimes : Clown-Free Zone... sorry, no clowns allowed -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Earlie who wrote (48709)	12/18/2000 11:39:42 AM
From: Box-By-The-Riviera™	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 436258

well....here's the plan.... channel summit.... everyone bites the bullet.... fed gov steps in with some subsidies for shipping and handling....voila....channel dump.... why not dump it in the spirit of the new economy.... and take the charge...hell...hide the charge and ramp the adoption.... drama dude, drama. we will call it... The New Leap of Faith kind of an FDR type thingy for displaced billionaires.

To: Earlie who wrote (48709)	12/18/2000 11:53:52 AM
From: Box-By-The-Riviera™	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 436258

don't forget to keep an open mind..... Monday December 18 10:21 AM ET Make An Appointment with the Phones of the Future By Richard Baum, UK Telecoms Correspondent LONDON (Reuters) - If you're getting a stylish mobile phone for Christmas, don't count on it impressing your friends for too long. The New Year promises so many changes in the way mobiles look and work that all but a few of the handsets on Santa's sleigh risk dating as quickly as a seasonal pop song. Large color screens, sophisticated diary functions and new spins on games will become de rigueur for Europe's mobile fashion victims. Savvy commuters will hook themselves into handsets with built-in MP3 digital music players, or even watch film clips on a mobile videophone. Although some of these technologies have made it to the market just in time for Christmas, the choice of so-called ''feature phones'' is set to explode next year. With many people willing to change their handset as often as every six months, manufacturers are working overtime to dream up products that are just a bit sexier than the competition's. In the past that meant making the phones smaller. But now that handsets have shrunk as far as they realistically can, the emphasis is turning to features. ``The real panic to be making the smallest phone is now gone. It's more about getting the style and form right for the market you're targeting,'' said Keith Westcott, Ericsson's (LMEb.ST) managing director of consumer products in Britain. While that still means size and looks for the mass teenage market, the focus at the top of the range is on merging phones with palm-sized computers. Clunky Communicator Handsets combining the diary and address book functions of personal digital assistants (PDAs) have been around since Nokia (NOK1V.HE) launched the Communicator in 1998. The Communicator, a handset that opened up like a miniature laptop computer, has been too expensive and clunky to win many fans, but the basic idea has taken root and is starting to spawn more sophisticated devices. Nokia is promising a color Communicator for the first half of 2001, while Ericsson has been winning rave reviews for its recently launched R380. This combines a touch-sensitive screen the size of a business card and a full range of PDA functions in a phone not much bigger or heavier than a basic handset. Although a British price of 450 pounds ($652) means the R380 is strictly a niche product for now, prices are expected to be much lower by the end of 2001. ``What we've learned over the last 10 years is what's niche in one year becomes mainstream the following year,'' said Jonathan Hook, marketing director of Carphone Warehouse (CPW.L), Europe's largest mobile phone retailer. Hook sees the convergence of phones and PDAs moving from two directions. Just as phones are commandeering some of the functions of electronic organizers, so PDAs with their larger screens are going online. The Palm VII (news - web sites) version of the popular PDA has offered U.S. residents wireless e-mail and Internet access for some time, albeit with many limitations, and plug-in modules are extending the same functions to cheaper Palm (NasdaqNM:PALM - news) models and the rival Visor. Pocket Pc While the Palm operating system is enormously popular, the contenders for next year's most covetable gadgets could well be wireless PDAs running on Microsoft's (NasdaqNM:MSFT - news) rival Pocket PC software. The latest version of Microsoft's stripped down Windows CE operating system is inspiring a wave of handheld computers combining large color screens, big memories and multimedia functions in hand-sized cases. With Pocket PC devices just launched by France's Sagem (SAGM.PA) and forthcoming from a joint venture between Siemens (SIEGn.DE) and Casio (6952.T) also packing in everything you need to make voice and Internet calls, 2001 may be the year when people start swapping their phone and PDA for a single product. It is a trend the telecoms industry is eager to encourage. Next-generation mobile technologies providing always-on, high-speed Internet connections will transform mobile phones into pocket computers -- or so the industry hopes. The multi-function phones are its first crack at convincing consumers. ``We've got to start teaching the user now that the mobile phone is much more than something you put to your ear,'' said Ben Wood of wireless research company Mobile Lifestreams. ``How you make that jump to these multimedia phones will be this enhanced functionality.'' It's not just consumers who are under pressure to rethink their idea of a phone. As handsets merge with music recorders, games machines and digital cameras, the phone manufacturers are having to gain new consumer electronics skills. Alliances With Traditional Gadget Makers That is forcing them to forge alliances with the traditional gadget makers, leading to the tie-up between Siemens and Casio and an alliance between Motorola (NYSE:MOT - news) and Palm. ``We predict that Nokia will make some kind of alliance with a Japanese consumer electronics firm,'' Wood said. For Japanese companies like Sony (6758.T) and Panasonic (6752.T) it is a fresh chance to carve a chunk out of a market dominated by the European handset makers and Motorola. Moreover, it is providing Microsoft with the opportunity to become a serious player in the industry. The Pocket PC devices are the fruit of a project called Stinger that aims to lay down a specification for wireless PDAs. The software giant is licensing the specification to companies such as Samsung (00830.KS) with the aim of extending its dominance over desktop operating systems to the mobile world. Even with their sleek design, the Pocket PC devices face tough competition. As well as Palm, Microsoft is competing with British PDA maker Psion (PON.L) and its Symbian spin-off, whose EPOC operating system underpins Ericsson's R380. So Microsoft is thinking big for its marketing strategy. Its managing director for Britain, Neil Holloway, is proposing that banks and retailers wanting to win online customers give away wireless Pocket PCs, in the same way that they offered free WAP Internet phones this year. For people who really want to stand out from the crowd, though, a Pocket PC will turn fewer heads than an Orange (FTE.PA) videophone. The mobile operator has been promising the brick-sized communicator with a built-in video camera for months, and swears it will be on the market early next year. At a price of more than 1,000 pounds, however, only the very well behaved will get one from Santa next year.